Clinton Focuses G-7 on Jobs, Trade

APLES, Italy -- President Bill Clinton put jobs and free trade on top of the agenda for a Group of Seven summit in Naples on Friday, saying it should not be sidetracked into panic moves to support a sagging U.S. dollar. At a keynote pre-summit news conference Clinton appeared not to favor interest rate hikes or other abrupt measures of the sort that may crimp economic activity in order to lift the dollar from 50-year lows against Japan's yen. "It would be a mistake for us to change the fundamental objective ... which is to pursue global growth," Clinton said, adding, "It is important not to overreact." This quenched speculation the G-7 summit that was opening later on Friday with a banquet in Naples's 12th-century Castel DellOvo fortress can make coordinated monetary intervention. Leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States, joined later by President Boris Yeltsin, will contemplate an array of global anxieties. These range from war in the Balkans through nuclear safety in Ukraine, site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, to the scourge of mass unemployment. Dramatic initiatives are unlikely. Italian leaks on a summit economic communiqu?, that is already in draft form, further confirmed that the leaders at capitalism's "high table" will wave no magic wand. They are likely to deliver plans for between $5 and $6 billion of aid for Ukraine as a reward for dismantling its nuclear complex. But on wider economic issues, they will grimly conclude that the present global recovery from recession alone will not suffice to create jobs for their 24 million unemployed. Clinton flew to Naples stressing the importance of freer trade. The United States particularly wants Japan to open up its market to U.S. and other foreign goods and reduce its huge trade surplus, seen at around $130 billion in 1993/94. Clinton shared his news conference with new Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama with whom he had discussed these issues at a bilateral pre-summit meeting. "My candid answer would have to be, no," Clinton said, when asked if he was happy with progress thus far on a U.S.-Japan trade accord. But he conceded that Japan had recently been in political turmoil. Prospects might now be better for resumed talks. Murayama, 70, Japan's first socialist premier since 1948, took power only this month as leader of a vulnerable coalition. He vowed to extend a 1994 tax-cutting program into 1995 in efforts to kick-start economic policies to boost consumer spending so that the Japanese buy more foreign goods. Yeltsin joins the G-7 leaders on Sunday for talks on a political agenda. That meeting is expected to endorse a peace plan to split Bosnia roughly 50-50 between Serbs and a Moslem-Croat federation. But it is uncertain whether big power endorsement will guarantee that all Bosnian factions accept the plan, seen as a last chance to end the bloodshed and remove a threat of wider Balkan war.